In my *extensive* one year of vegetable gardening experience, peas have so far been one of my very favorite things to grow. There is just something so fun about them - the staking, the pretty white flowers, and most importantly, having a constant outdoor snack for the boys to crunch on. I can’t remember how many times last summer that we would be out in the yard and stroll over to the garden to grab a handful of snap peas.

So this year I decided to do more of them, and to include both Snap Peas and Snow Peas (both from Botanical Interests). I also learned that I did a whole slew of things wrong when I grew them last season! So that speaks, I think, to the fun of peas - I can do several things poorly and still consider them to be one of my favorite things to grow.

I’ve just harvested our first real bowl-full of the season, though, and already I can see the difference in how much we are getting. Plus the plants just look a whole lot better, healthier. And so many more of them germinated this time around.

So here’s a bit of what I learned in the past one year about growing peas.

They don’t like to be transplanted. I didn’t know that last year and planted them in cells early in the spring. Then after the frost free date in May I moved them out. I think only about half of them germinated in the greenhouse, and then a few just didn’t like being moved so I lost even more.

So this year I planted them directly where they were going to stay, and I did it a whole lot earlier. Peas can be put outside 4-6 weeks before the average frost free date, so planting them in late March was no problem.

Soak ‘em! In the same way that one would soak beans before cooking them, you can soak the peas in water overnight to soften them up and this helps them to germinate. Gayla Trail told me so . . . in her book. And if I’ve learned anything it’s to do what Gayla Trail tells me to do. My hero. (Grow Great Grub is still one of my favorite gardening books.)

So, between the soaking and the direct sewing, every single one of my peas germinated this time around. Seriously. Every. Single. One.

Say No To The Row. Last year I staked the peas using a few stakes in a row and tying string between them. It was ok, but never looked quite right and wasn’t as supportive as it could have been because they were spaced too far apart; they couldn’t grab onto each other, only the string. I remember that late in the season I had to add a second row of stakes so that they had something else to reach out and grab.

So instead I decided to do a Pea-Tee-Pee using four bamboo rods. When I planted them I circled each rod with the pea seeds and then did a few between each stake too. In so much less space I was able to plant at least three times what I did before.

The boys have affectionately dubbed it the “Pea Rocket” despite my insistence that it’s a “Pea-Tee-Pee.”

So that’s just three stakes with one going up the center and tied at the top. Much more stable and cuter to boot.

They don’t need a freaking foot of space. Each seed only needs about 6 inches of space between it and the next - they grow up, not out.

I’m also trying to maximize my space by planting more under the peas this year. So here I have some mustard greens that are cool with having some shade from the peas. And it appears all is well with the pea/mustard coexistence.

My first pea harvest was today. Immediately after taking this photo Robby ate every single snap pea out of the bowl saying, “num num num num, yummy peas.” How could they not be one of my favorites?

Hungry for peas? Oh, good, because they are this Friday’s From Dirt To Dinner theme ingredient!